Greetings my Weary Dearies,

I did a bold, noble, perhaps heroic, perhaps even patriotic thing this week. It wasn’t easy but I gritted my teeth and did it anyway. I did it for the good of the future, the good of the world, and my country and a very special little girl. I won’t receive a medal or any kind of reward for my Noblesse. It’s quite likely I squandered time that my alter-ego “Grundalina” could have spent lounging on a couch binge-watching “The Queen’s Gambit” and snacking directly out of cardboard boxes and “family size” bags of dehydrated potato parts. It’s a risk I simply had to take. Maybe Santa and St. Peter weren’t even watching and doling out the points… Perhaps it was all for naught…. Still, I willingly exchanged a bit of my earthly existence to do it and I don’t regret it:

I taught a six-year-old girl to knit.

Teaching six-year-olds to knit is like the pain one inflicts on oneself while jogging. You tell yourself that Actual Good is coming from this dreaded activity that feels so immensely good to Stop doing. You feel exhausted and relieved when the session is concluded and you tell yourself that embracing pain on your own terms gives one a greater capacity for dealing with pain that occurs not on one’s terms. Acts of perseverance increase our resilience. Choosing to endure “what must be done” builds Character.

The little girl, with eyes as dangerous as the knitting needles she brandishes, is a total Character. I adore her. She is Little Miss Ravenlocks, the next door neighbor of an elderly friend of mine whom I visit regularly. The little girl and I are the only ones allowed into this friend’s house, wearing masks of course, during the pandemic. Little Miss Ravenlocks visits my friend every day and they color and draw and take nature walks and tend my friend’s sheep. A few months ago, when my friend’s sheep dog died, this little girl, who had learned all the commands from watching the dog, took to running the sheep in for her. “She is as good as any Border Collie,” says my friend proudly, “and she responds just about the same to the whistles.” Her school is closed and her mother, currently working from home due to Covid-19, has to fit in home-schooling around a demanding job. Both are grateful that she can escape to the farm next door to play and run. She has been begging to knit for a while now.

I don’t have the foggiest idea how to teach someone to knit in a socially distanced way, especially a six-year-old who is part Border Collie. So It’s not long before we are tangled together, hands, fingers, yarn, needles. I decide to teach her the European way of knitting, so we can keep the yarn behind the left needle, where it will cause less trouble. My hands hold hers as I teach her the nursery rhyme that goes with each step:

“In through the front door” (poke the needle in the next loop),

”Round to the back,” (pick up a new loop of yarn in the back),

“Peek through the window,” (bring new loop through the old loop)

“And Off Jumps Jack!” (slide old loop off the needle.)

Again and again we poke and peek and jump together. “In through the front door, round to the back, peek through the window, off jumps Jack!” We have put six stitches on the needle, because she is six. Each time we finish the row, we count and pull. Our piece gets longer each time and she vibrates all over with glee, like a puppy asking to have a ball thrown again.

“This is way more fun even than I thought it would be!” she says, visibly bouncing on the seat next to me. “

“I’m so glad,” I mutter, as we struggle to get another batch of Jacks jumping. The thick, fuzzy yarn splices easily and her loose stitches are hard to keep on the bamboo needles. Unless they are suddenly way too tight and then that little bastard Jack refuses to jump at all. We have been chanting and chasing Jack for another ten rows when I decide she can go it alone now. She is pulling on the needles and becoming restless and Prudence has had about enough of Jack and his capricious ways. Prudence just wants to grab the needles and do it all herself. I tell Prudence to go sit on the couch and commiserate with Grundalina. It’s Little Miss Ravenlock’s turn. Children don’t learn from telling; they learn from Doing. We need to get out of her way.

The bright eyes gaze at the yarn in her hands. It looks different, alien, without my hands there, over hers. Instantly, she forgets everything. “How does it go?” she wants to know. “I think I forget.”

“Nonsense,” I reassure her. “You did not forget. Your brain just got a little tired and the screen went blank while it thinks this out. Say the rhyme and let your hands stay still.” She does. She knows the rhyme perfectly.

“So, what comes first? How do you get in the front door?” She is frozen, staring. She shrugs her shoulders. “Why don’t we take a small rest?” I suggest. “I promise, you’ll remember after a wee break.”

But she does not want to rest. “I want to knit a scarf for my daddy,” she insists, panting. “And then I’m going to make some mittens for Mommy.” Clearly, she has a lot to do before she has to go home today. The Border Collie in her has no time for rest.

“You are going to be a wonderful knitter,” I tell her confidently.

“I’m very good at this already,” she says with aplomb, momentarily oblivious to the fact that she is stuck and awaiting instructions. “AND did you know I have FIVE best friends?”

“That’s wonderful,” I say. “I can see that you have very skillful little fingers and a lot of dexterity—that means your fingers like to play with tiny things—but what is going to make you such a great knitter is that you don’t want to quit. That is an amazing thing in any learner. The Best Knitters are very patient and persistent. Knitting a scarf or some mittens takes an awfully long time.”

She shrugs and wiggles happily at the news. “I’m going to knit for everybody!” She looks at the ball of yarn I have given her. “How did you know that Red is my favorite color?”

“I guessed. And it’s one of my favorites too, so I had some lying around that I could share.”

She hugs it. “I’m going to make so many things out of this!”

I do not have the heart to tell her that she’ll be lucky to get a ratty little pot-holder or two out of it. There is not much yarn. She has no clue that one needs multiple skeins for projects—two for socks, nine for sweaters, and four for a shawl. She is too busily full of generosity and idealism and enthusiasm. She is going to get this Jack character to behave on the needle and then she is going to slip-cover everyone she knows in wool and Love.

I look at her and smile. I have been her. I have had those same thoughts. Every creative person does. I know that, even if her tiny hands falter and forget the stitches, she is already a Knitter.

She slips all the loops off the needle by accident. “Ooops!” she shouts, “Aaaagh! Now what?”

“You tell me!”

“Put them back on?”

“Clever girl!” Little Miss Ravenlocks re-inserts the needle deftly through the loops and begins the rhyming again. She manages to knit a whole row by herself.

“See?” I say, “You did not forget. Your brain was just chewing.”

She arches an eyebrow and gives me that look that well-brought-up children give grown-ups who are weird but they are too polite to say so.

“But I am afraid I will forget,” she says. “What if I forget?”

“Then I shall simply teach you again!” I say. “Only next time you will learn faster. Most people have to learn to knit several times before they get the hang of it. You can have as many lessons as you want, as long as you think it is fun.”

“That reminds me,” says my friend, who has been listening from a nearby chair. “Her mother wants to pay you for doing this. We’ll send her home tonight with a note saying how much you charge and she’ll send over a cheque for next time.”

I look at the girl, whose dark head is bent over her knitting, which is now a tangled mess, and I announce in bold, theatrical tones “But I am SO expensive! I charge a LOT.” The little girl looks unconcerned. Her parents can afford it. I continue “But I cannot take money from grown-ups. I only charge my students. Little Miss Ravenlocks is going to have to pay for this all by herself.” Now, I have her attention!

“But I don’t have any money,” she says blithely.

“I don’t charge money,” I say ominously.

“Then how can I pay?”

I explain.

“I just paid you. I paid you in good time, yarn, and needles. Now—someday when you are a fabulous knitter—you must teach at least one other person to knit too. And then we will be even. You have fifty years to do it. Make it fifty-three. Do we have a deal?”

“I’m going to teach FIVE-- my five best friends!” she says excitedly.

“I’m only charging you to teach ONE,” I say. “And it doesn’t have to be soon. Just Someday…when you are a little old lady like me, take a little person and teach him or her to knit. It’s something we have to pass on.”

“Like the virus, but in a good way,” she says.

Yes. Precisely.

“But what if I teach five. Because they are all my best friends and I don’t think Ashley even knows that knitting exists. She’s going to be so surprised,” she says with emphasis.

“Well,” I say, “The more you teach, the richer we all will be!”

Gradually, the light fades and it is time to walk her home and tell her that she must NEVER run with knitting needles and that they need to be kept in a safe space at all times. She nods and scurries away on blurry feet that barely qualify as “walking.” “I need to get home and practice,” she calls from the darkness.

Later, I get a text from her mother, which reads “Thank you so much! I heard you are getting all the money she makes teaching others to knit!” I guess this savvy little six-year-old sees me as the originator of some pyramid marketing scheme—or the Fagan of knitwear! Ha!

Giving someone who has the energy of a Border Collie two sharpened sticks and asking her to keep them pointed in the right direction is as big an act of Faith as anything I have ever done. But, bless her, she listened. She was ready to learn. Prudence and Grundalina survived. No one gave up—And we all shared in triumph.

Today, as our country (and the world) waits with bated breath for our election results, it does my heart some good to think that Little Miss Ravenlocks is at home, cajoling that rascal Jack to make his jumps, oblivious to the world we are creating for her. (I hope we can clean it up before she finds out.) As soon as I finish this blog, I’ll pick up my own wool and needles and make something lovely out of all this stress that needs to go somewhere. Binge-knitting is one of the more socially acceptable numbing behaviours I can turn to at a time like this. I am tired of “doom-scrolling” through messages that physically hurt my stomach to read. I am tired of the rhetoric that is so filled with hate and I’m so bewildered by people, some of whom I love dearly, whose logic does not match my own. In a land where so much is deeply broken, we need Menders, Healers, Cooks, and Fixers. The politicians aren’t going to fix it, no matter who wins; WE are. It’s up to us, Dear Ones! It’s time to create the kind of world we want to live in. (Mine is where every six-year-old learns to knit!)

Our country is a mess and we have serious work to do. Yet, admitting that we have problems is a fantastic act of optimism because it allows for the consideration that “Things could be better.” Yes! Now how? What would that take? Are you willing to pitch in?

I know, deep in my heart, that if we put our left hands and right hands gently together in the middle and handle our sharp sticks carefully, we can create Something…um probably something pretty dreadful, much like a six-year-old’s first scrap of knitting, but it would give us all the hope of Something Better—that’s how it is when we are just learning. Let’s not quit. Maybe our first project could be a crummy little pot-holder for this Melting Pot that is boiling over…

I love you SEW much, no matter who you voted for. I honor your right to choose. Now let’s reclaim our Dignity and get to work. Let the mending continue!

Yours aye,

Nancy